Best Food Writing 2011

by Holly Hughes

  Side-by-side with school lunchroom versions, these tots appear to have been fried an extra 30 seconds. They bear a hue one shade east of golden, approaching orange. You realize just how rare it is to be served deep-fried tater tots, instead of the frozen Ore-Ida versions you’d bake at home. You don’t feel short-changed with the crispiness-to-soft-potato-interior ratio—ideally more of the former.

  While most french fries are a crap shoot, every bite of tot here is a carbon copy of the previous. A high-treble crunch emanates from the molars, then a mellow hit of salt-and-pepper-seasoned potato. You’re paying for that audible texture; the flavors are neutral enough that it’s more a vessel for the trio of dipping sauces. Honey mustard is fine, but store-bought. House-made ranch tastes watered down, lacking that assertive garlic zing. The zesty barbecue sauce, thick with chunks of tomato, is decent. My preference, however, already sits on the table: ketchup with three splashes of Louisiana hot sauce, a sufficient balance of sodium and vinegar. It is the ideal accompaniment.

  If you dine with one other person, you’ll notice this 10 minutes in: The basket’s contents do not appear to diminish. There’s like 50 staring back at you. And yet, you muscle through them, because like packing bubbles, you are evolutionarily wired to pop every last one, or else you don’t feel complete. It’s like the Village People singing Y-M-C and calling it a night.

  What’s our conclusion? The pretentious critical analyst in me knows they’re just tater tots done well, no need to alert the James Beard committee. But I’m willing to submit to the narrative, and allow my brain to take hype and interpret it through a tastier prism.

  So the answer to the question turns out to be an endless loop.

  On one hand, they’re very good ... but they’re just tater tots ... but they are very good ... yeah, but they’re just tater tots. And on and on. Maybe it’s time to stop overthinking things.

  AREA BURGER JOINTS TAKE THE JUNK OUT OF FAST FOOD

  By Steve Holt

  From Edible Boston

  Among the Edible Communities’ steadily growing family of magazines, the emphasis is usually on artisanal, locavore, virtuous food—but virtue doesn’t have to mean leaving the burgers and fries behind. Freelance feature writer Steve Holt did the legwork for Edible Boston readers.

  Fact: We all crave fast food.

  It’s as human as hangnails, bad hair days and squabbles with the mother-in-law. Even the most set-in-her-ways, bleeding-heart locavore must admit that on occasion all she wants is to order her meal at a counter and be asked if she wants fries with that. Maybe it’s one of those late-night munchies attacks. The need for a quick meal on the walk home from work. Or, perhaps, hungry little mouths when a root canal sounds more appealing than making something from scratch.

  Fact: For those who appreciate fresh, local food, succumbing to such temptations usually requires a breach of conscience. And, perhaps, a disguise—one of those Groucho Marx glasses-nose-mustache combos, maybe. Wouldn’t want to run into that woman from your community garden on the way home. Pulling your scarf even tighter over your head, you mumble your order to the guy behind the register. Your shame is enough to drive you back to confession, and you gave up religion years ago. And all this before you take that first bite.

  Well, take off the plastic facial features and, for God’s sake, put down the square-pattied burger. I bear tidings of great joy. No longer must you hide or compromise your culinary values. You now have alternatives, thanks to the arrival of a couple of new burger joints that are friendly to your waist, wallet and, yes, watch.

  Welcome to Guilt-free Fast Food

  Call it the fast-food counterattack. Or maybe a burger backlash. The first decade of the new millennium was not kind to the fast-food industry. There were high-profile books and films flambéing fast food—notably Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation and Morgan Spurlock’s McDonald’s-slaying documentary, Super Size Me. Then, a succession of cities banned the use of trans fats by restaurants, a decree that touched nearly every major name in the industry. Follow that up with several E. coli outbreaks and the continued expansion of the local and organic food movements, and one has a decade rife with industry change. And to think, all this just a few years after our own president confessed his addiction to the golden arches.

  Gradually, restaurant after restaurant popped up claiming to be the “new fast food,” offering healthier menu options, often local meat and vegetables and a generally more positive environment for customer and employee alike.

  Predictably, many fizzled. But a few sizzled.

  In the Boston area, their names are FOUR Burgers and b.good. Both have set out to offer the quickest, highest quality burger without making diners (or workers) feel like herded cattle. Both emphasize the local origins of their ground beef and potatoes, all of which is ground and cut in-house. At FOUR Burgers, customers can even get a glass of Pinot Grigio or a bottle of Allagash Ale with their meal. And with wait times comparable to traditional burger joints, these gastronomical rabble-rousers promise to be family-friendly as well. Can they deliver? For the answer, you’ll have to wait.

  After a lifetime in the restaurant business, Rhode Island native Michael Bissanti set out to open a burger restaurant in the Boston area. He wanted to do several things differently than other places, though. Where other joints downplay or completely ignore anything but a standard beef burger, Bissanti wanted to highlight patties prepared with other palatable ingredients—turkey, veggie and even salmon. He’d still serve a beef burger, but he would use only grass-fed varieties from farms within a few hundred miles. He’d serve them all on actual plates. He’d support local businesses and give back to the community.

  Celebrating its third birthday this June, FOUR Burgers—aptly named for the number of bunned creations it offers—delivers on Bissanti’s goals and is a local leader in the movement to serve better fast food. It’s a concept Bissanti sums up in one often-misused word: hospitality. Hospitality, Bissanti asserts, is a symphony involving customers, the community, a quality product and the overall experience in his restaurant. The burger must taste good, yes. But the customer must also feel at home in his dining room. Bissanti has caught more than a couple patrons off guard by emerging from the kitchen to bus their dishes and make sure they enjoyed themselves.

  “We want to wow them,” says Bissanti, who also co-owns The Paramount in Beacon Hill.

  With its location in Central Square—Cambridge’s fast-food epicenter—how does FOUR Burgers fare against its cheaper competition? Well, sales don’t lie. Bissanti says business was up 15% in 2010 from the year before. And FOUR Burgers’ second location—in Back Bay—is set to open in late spring.

  The secret—which Bissanti shares hesitantly—is simple: Keep it simple. Narrow the menu choices and do everything well. But simplicity even extends to his recipes. Case in point, his beef hamburger.

  “It’s just a basic hamburger. We didn’t mess with it,” he says. “We just wanted to appreciate foods for what they are.”

  And customers seem to appreciate Bissanti’s burger philosophy, a number of them regularly ordering just a medium-rare burger on a bun—no sauces, no vegetables. When I was there, a customer stopped by the counter on his way out the door. “That was a damn good burger,” he told the woman working the register.

  FOUR Burgers sources all its ground beef from the Northeast, the benefits of which—economically and nutritionally—are not lost on Bissanti. “By sourcing locally, you affect so many people in a short distance,” he says. “It only has to travel a couple hundred miles instead of a few thousand miles, and that is a very measurable difference in the environment.”

  A sign hangs prominently next to the cash register touting the benefits of all-natural burgers. No hormones or antiobiotics ... healthier ... supports family farms ... creates jobs ... smaller carbon footprint ... prevents overdevelopment of land ...

  And how many burger joints do you know that save their frying oil and have compost bins out back? FOU
R Burgers also sells Massachusetts-based Spindrift Sodas, a line Bissanti would like to see eventually replace the Coca-Cola and Pepsi products he currently offers.

  “That’s the only high-fructose corn syrup in the whole restaurant,” Bissanti says, pointing to the soda machine.

  If there is a downside to FOUR Burgers and its counterparts, it’s the price. You’re going to pay several dollars more per person here than you would ordering off the value menu. A burger with lettuce and tomato will run you $7.50 at FOUR Burgers, for instance. But hopefully by now we’re aware that, as with the Chinamade knickknack from the big-box store, a buck or two fails to account for a hamburger’s true cost—to the animal, the farmers, the meat packers, the environment and your body. That said, you’re still going to pay less here than you would at a steakhouse.

  The primary silver lining to the price, though, is that our spending more allows restaurants like FOUR Burgers to spend more on local and grass-fed beef. Bissanti says he’s thrilled eaters are willing to pay more for better meat.

  “People must be asking for it more or [restaurants] wouldn’t do it,” he says. “When people are also willing to dig a little bit deeper to support it, it’s even more encouraging. Kind of gets you out of bed in the morning.”

  A number of major fast-food chains have made changes in response to consumer demands and media criticism. Wendy’s introduced a line of salads and switched to “natural, real-cut” fries. McDonald’s expanded, healthier menu includes oatmeal with fruit and snack-sized wraps. But for an increasing number of consumers, a few cosmetic changes to an industry wrought with problems is not enough. We want the assurance that in exchange for a meal on the run, we’re not sacrificing quality, health or ecology. In this way, the healthy burger revolution is a sight for sore eyes.

  But How Will Fast Food Lite Hold Up

  Against the Toughest Critic Around: A 4-Year-Old?

  With neither the time nor the ingredients to cook at home, my wife and I took our little guy to the Washington Street location of b.good, another of the Boston-born burger restaurants. Founders Jon Olinto and Anthony Ackil opened their Back Bay location in 2003. Since then, the business has ballooned to seven locations in Boston, Cambridge, Dedham and Hingham. Built on the motto “real.food.fast.,” b.good boasts all-natural, mostly local ingredients and superior quality foods.

  But if there is a weakness here, our ankle-biter will sniff it out. Too long of a wait. A condiment out of place. A burger piled too high for a little mouth. A poor choice of paint colors, for crying out loud. Throw into the mix that he hasn’t had his nap, and all bets are off.

  Move over, Ruth Reichl.

  As we enter, an employee is changing the trash barrels. She sees our little boy first. “Hey there!” she chirps. “You hungry?” Immediately, Mr. No-Filter clams up. She introduces herself. “What’s your name?” He answers, shyly. She asks how old he is. She has a 5-year-old.

  At this point, I figure she knows he’s reviewing the place. He’s been made, and she’s just buttering him up. But regardless of her motive, it works—he’s immediately at ease. He confidently orders his favorite, the cheeseburger (toy not included). My wife gets the West Side turkey burger—which comes loaded with avocado, cilantro, tomato and chipotle salsa. I choose the Adopted Luke turkey burger, which features mushrooms, caramelized onions, Swiss cheese and barbecue sauce. We get two orders of their air-baked fries—one sweet potato and one regular—to share, as well as an order of crisp veggies. Throw in a couple of drinks, and our total comes to around $30.

  As we’re waiting for our orders to come up, my wife reads to our hungry boy from a cardboard centerpiece sitting on the table. It tells story of the Lawlors, a family in Merill, Maine, whose cattle farm provides the grass-fed burger meat to many of b.good’s locations. Nothing like impromptu teaching moments while waiting for fast food.

  After no more than a 10-minute wait, we are chowing down. All three burgers are perfectly cooked and dripping with the toppings we requested. Well-done. The fresh vegetables—broccoli, carrots and red peppers—are crisp, tasty and grown by a farmer named Dick in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, a sign on the wall tells us. Frank, from Hatfield, Massachusetts, provided the potatoes for the crispy, air-baked fries. Thank you, Dick and Frank.

  So how did the boy like it? Well, aside from the burger half we set aside for the next day’s lunch, his plate was clean and he was left clamoring for more fries. He even loved his portion of the vegetables. Also, we’ve discovered a scientific correlation between how much he hums during the meal and his enjoyment thereof. This night, those dining around us were amply serenaded.

  Our healthy, sustainable family fast-food outing was a huge success. Our bellies were full, and most importantly our consciences were clean. As for finishing our meal in a reasonable block of time, we didn’t fare so well. I guess our son hasn’t gotten the memo that in America, taking one’s time while eating is considered in poor taste. This may technically be considered fast food, but with a 4-year-old, it’s anything but.

  FRY GIRL’S YEAR OF EATING DANGEROUSLY

  By Laura Hahnefeld

  From Phoenix New Times

  Blogging under the name Fry Girl for this alt-weekly’s dining section, Laura Hahnefeld honed a spiky, irreverent writing style that recently won her New Times’s chief restaurant reviewer slot. Now, if her stomach can only recover ...

  “Well, we’ve got the results from your tests.” I’m in the examining room at my doctor’s office. It’s been three weeks that I’ve been out of the hospital, two weeks since I swallowed a camera to take thousands of pictures of my intestines—a Fantastic Voyage of all guts, no glory, and possible blockage—and a month of my stomach feeling nauseated or refusing me the rights to good posture.

  The doctor riffles through pages in my file and fires off some phrases that could be medical terminology or a passage from Cicero’s De Re Publica. I ask him to dumb it down.

  “It was one of two strains of a virus caused by bad food. One linked directly to chicken.” He looks up from behind his glasses and asks, “Can you think where you might have picked it up from?”

  What could I say? That for almost a year I’ve been eating fast food for a living? That I’ve willingly thrown my past good eating habits out the drive-thru window so that I can consume levels of fat, sodium, and cholesterol far beyond the recommended daily allowance even for a Kodiak bear? That I troll the Internet and cruise city streets looking for the next fast-food fix like some sort of junk food junkie? That I’ve developed relationships with local patty-pushers who seek my advice while being reviled by others who deem my greasy daily grind shameful, at best?

  That I’m fucking Fry Girl?

  At the hospital, I learned that VIP treatment comes with a disastrous diagnosis. In my case, they thought I had appendicitis. Some folks are just lucky, I guess.

  It wasn’t that, thankfully. It was just my yet-to-be-diagnosed stomach virus playing a painful game of make-believe. A pseudoappendicitis. Kind of like a false pregnancy but without the ice cream and distended gut. It never occurred to me to blame my current eating habits—my daily consumption of greasy eats coming from a collection of kitchens, some of questionable cleanliness and food-safety protocol. I chalked it up to stress, bad genes, a Gypsy curse, Sex and the City 2—anything but fast food.

  I never thought I was in danger. I used my three-day hospital stay to catch up on some reading and bad TV. Save for my husband—whom I texted, “In the emergency room,” when he sent me a message seeking my whereabouts—few people, including my family, were the wiser.

  And on my last day at the hospital, after being on a strict liquid diet and needing to consume a full meal before the doc would spring me, what did I order? A cheeseburger and fries. And they were terrible.

  Now, Fry Girl wasn’t always Fry Girl. For two years prior to fast food, I was Princess Pescatarian. What’s a pescatarian? No, it’s not a Zodiac sign, a World of Warcraft creature, or someone who excels at be
ing a pain in the ass (although many may agree with the latter); it’s a person whose diet consists of fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts, grains, beans, eggs, and dairy. Good eatin’ and for the most part, fast-food free. Yay, go me.

  But before the band strikes up, know that my vegetable and fish fetish, although the most healthful, wasn’t the first in a long line of food-related obsessions spanning my childhood and spilling over into my adult years. In no particular order they include:

  • Six months of Faygo Red Pop, two to six glasses a day.

  • Three years of canned whole smoked mussels, one to two times a week.

  • Cinnamon Pop-Tarts once a day for eight months (this one has since resurfaced).

  • Ketchup on white bread, one to three times a week (ongoing).

  • Twenty bags of Cheetos in two weeks, so I could get Chester the Cheetah delivered to my doorstep in plushy perfection before the expiration date.

  Crazy? Maybe. A little obsessive/compulsive? You bet. I blame my childhood, TV, and the Catholics.

  As the elder of two kids being raised by a single mom, my jeans were Toughskins, home alone wasn’t yet a movie, and the fast food we saw advertised on television manifested itself as a treat, not a dietary staple, which only made my sister and me crave it all the more—especially the holy grail of hamburgerdom, the McDonald’s Birthday Party, where it was rumored there was a merry-go-round, you could eat all the cheeseburgers you wanted, and they roped off a special section of the restaurant so you could puke on the floor if you had to. Bliss.